The sharp corners and edges of furniture, appliances, and similar items pose the hazard of bodily harm to persons accidentally colliding therewith, particularly small children. It is well-known to provide such corners and edges with cushions or bumpers to reduce the risk of injury to a person colliding therewith. Some disadvantages and drawbacks of the prior art include insufficient shock-absorbing capability, difficulty in conforming to the surfaces of furniture and the resulting tendency to fall off or come undone, and susceptibility to removal by small children.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,150,854 to Jamieson discloses a pre-formed corner protector integrally molded from soft rubber or plastic for mounting on the edges and corners of furniture. Two vertical sidewalls are interconnected at their junction by a hollow, bulbous portion and at their top edges by a horizontal top wall. As stated above, the Jamieson device is pre-formed; i.e., it is molded in its final, three-dimensional shape for a furniture corner of particular configuration. Because the Jamieson device is molded in its final configuration, it does not adapt itself well to corners and edges of furniture which vary even slightly from the configuration for which it was molded; e.g., for a corner or edge formed by surfaces intersecting at an angle even slightly different from that for which a particular device was molded, a different device made from a separate mold would be required.
Futhermore, it is well-known that molds for forming relatively deep, three-dimensional objects are more expensive to manufacture and less efficient to use than molds for forming articles which are essentially flat. Also, stacking, storing and shipping of pre-formed, three-dimensional devices such as Jamieson's is less efficient because the device requires more space than an essentially flat article and is more likely to be deformed or damaged in storage or transit.
A problem encountered in forming a resilient rubber or plastic device as an essentially flat blank for folding and mounting on a nonflat surface is that the "memory" of the resilient material tends to cause the device to return to its flat or unfolded state.